Image Rights and Unauthorized Commercial Use in Turkey

Image Rights and Unauthorized Commercial Use in Turkey is not governed by a single stand-alone “right of publicity” statute. In practice, Turkish protection is built from several layers of law working together: the Constitution, the Turkish Civil Code, the Turkish Code of Obligations, Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works, the Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698, consumer and advertising legislation, and, in serious cases, the Turkish Penal Code. That means using a person’s face, portrait, video clip, social-media image, or other identifiable visual material in Türkiye may trigger privacy, personality-rights, personal-data, advertising, and sometimes criminal consequences at the same time.

For brands, agencies, production companies, publishers, influencers, e-commerce businesses, and digital platforms, the practical lesson is straightforward: in Turkey, an image is not only a creative asset. If the person is identifiable, the image may also be legally protected as part of that person’s private life, personality, portrait rights, and personal data. When the same image is used to sell, endorse, promote, or strengthen a commercial message, the legal risk becomes higher, not lower.

The constitutional basis of image rights in Turkey

Any discussion of image rights in Turkey should begin with the Constitution. Article 20 states that everyone has the right to demand respect for private and family life and that everyone also has the right to request the protection of personal data. The same article says personal data may be processed only in cases envisaged by law or with the person’s explicit consent. Article 26 protects freedom of expression, including dissemination through pictures and other media. The Turkish model is therefore not one-sided: it protects both the individual’s private sphere and the broader freedom to publish and communicate.

That constitutional structure matters because most image disputes in Turkey are actually balancing exercises. A newspaper, documentary, broadcaster, creator, or brand may say the image use served expression, information, news, or creativity. The depicted person may say the same use invaded private life, exploited identity, or processed personal data without a valid basis. Turkish law does not resolve that tension through one automatic rule. It asks whether there is a lawful justification, whether the use serves a legitimate purpose, and whether the interference remains proportionate.

Article 86 of the Copyright Law is the key portrait rule

The most specific statutory rule on portraits is Article 86 of Law No. 5846. It states that even if they do not qualify as works, pictures and portraits may not be exhibited or otherwise disclosed to the public without the consent of the depicted person, or, after death, without the consent of the persons referred to in Article 19, unless ten years have passed after the depicted person’s death. This is a very important point: Turkish law protects portraits even when ordinary copyright analysis does not help.

Article 86 also contains exceptions. Consent is not required for pictures of persons who played a role in the political and social life of the country, pictures of parades, official gatherings or public meetings in which the depicted persons participated, and pictures relating to current events, radio, and film news. But the same article then expressly states that the provisions of Article 24 of the Turkish Civil Code remain reserved even where publication is permitted under those exceptions. In other words, the Copyright Law itself warns that the exceptions are not a universal permission slip.

This is one of the most important distinctions in Image Rights and Unauthorized Commercial Use in Turkey. The Article 86 exceptions are textually built around public-life and news-type contexts. They are a poor fit for pure commercial advertising. A politician’s or celebrity’s photo may sometimes be publishable as part of current-event reporting, but that does not automatically make it lawful to place the same image in a sales campaign, banner ad, packaging design, or brand partnership. That commercial step triggers a different analysis under personality-rights, data-protection, and advertising law.

Personality rights: the main civil-law remedy

The Turkish Civil Code gives the core civil remedy for unlawful image use. Article 24 states that a person whose personality rights are unlawfully attacked may claim judicial protection, and that each attack on personality rights is unlawful unless justified by the victim’s consent, a superior private or public interest, or authorization conferred by law. Article 25 then allows the claimant to seek prevention of an imminent attack, elimination of an ongoing attack, and a declaration that a completed attack was unlawful if its effects continue. It also reserves claims for physical and moral damages and for the transfer of gains obtained from the unlawful attack.

For unauthorized commercial image use, these provisions are often more important than copyright in the narrow sense. If a company uses an actor’s face in an ad after the contract expires, reuses a customer’s photo in a campaign without proper permission, turns an employee’s portrait into a brand asset, or republishes a creator’s image in a sales context never approved by that person, the depicted person can frame the problem as an unlawful assault on personality rights. That route is especially powerful because it supports both injunctive relief and compensation-related claims.

The Turkish Code of Obligations adds the compensation layer. Article 58 states that a person whose personality rights have been infringed may request a sum of money as moral compensation, and that the judge may order another form of redress instead of or in addition to monetary compensation, including a condemning decision and publication of that decision. This is highly relevant in image-rights cases because the harm is often reputational, dignitary, emotional, or identity-based rather than purely financial.

Why image rights also become personal-data law issues

In Turkey, image-rights disputes are no longer only civil-personality cases. They are also often KVKK cases. Article 3 of the Personal Data Protection Law defines personal data as any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person, and it defines processing very broadly to include collection, recording, storage, protection, alteration, disclosure, transfer, retrieval, making available, categorization, and preventing use. Based on that statutory definition, an identifiable photograph or video of a person will typically qualify as personal data.

That matters because the KVKK applies to natural or legal persons processing such data wholly or partly by automated means, or in structured filing systems. Article 4 then requires personal data to be processed lawfully and fairly, for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes, in a way that is relevant, limited, and proportionate to those purposes, and stored only for the legally required or purpose-related period. So even if a company already has a person’s image in its files, that does not mean it may freely reuse it for every later campaign or platform. Reuse still has to fit a lawful purpose and remain proportionate.

Article 5 is equally important. It says personal data shall not be processed without the data subject’s explicit consent unless one of the statutory exceptions applies, such as legal obligation, contractual necessity, establishment or protection of a right, or legitimate interest that does not override the data subject’s fundamental rights and freedoms. In commercial image-use cases, businesses often assume that “legitimate interest” or “prior relationship” is enough. That assumption is dangerous. The more clearly the image is being used to market goods or services, the stronger the argument becomes that a clear and informed consent or license framework should exist.

Article 10 then imposes an information duty. At the time personal data are obtained, the controller must inform the person about the controller’s identity, the purpose of processing, possible transfers, the method and legal basis of collection, and the person’s rights. In image-rights practice, this means a valid Turkish consent or release structure should not be vague. A model release or campaign consent should identify who will use the image, for what purpose, on which channels, and whether the image may be transferred to agencies, group companies, platforms, or foreign vendors.

Article 12 adds the security side. Controllers must take technical and organizational measures to prevent unlawful processing and unlawful access and to ensure protection of personal data, and they remain jointly responsible where processors act on their behalf. For unauthorized commercial use, that means the legal problem may lie not only in the original capture of the image but also in later internal sharing, agency circulation, upload to ad libraries, or storage in poorly controlled asset systems.

Biometric risk: when an image becomes even more sensitive

Not every image is biometric data, but some image-based processing clearly moves in that direction. Article 6 of the KVKK lists biometric data among the special categories of personal data. The Authority’s biometric-data guideline stresses that biometric-data processing must comply with the general principles in Article 4 and with Article 6’s stricter conditions, and it repeatedly emphasizes proportionality and the use of the least intrusive means. The guideline also summarizes Board reasoning that if the same goal can be achieved by less intrusive alternatives, biometric processing may be disproportionate.

This is increasingly important in entertainment, retail, sports venues, events, and digital marketing. A normal campaign photo is one thing. But facial-recognition entry systems, face-based audience analytics, automated tagging, image-based verification, and template extraction for unique identification raise a much stricter legal profile. In those cases, the business is no longer just “using a photo.” It may be processing a special category of personal data under a more demanding legal test.

Commercial use is stricter than editorial use

One of the biggest practical mistakes in Turkey is treating editorial visibility and commercial usability as the same thing. They are not. The Copyright Law’s Article 86 exceptions deal with public figures, public meetings, and current events. The Constitution protects expression and publication. And Article 28 of the KVKK creates an exemption where personal data are processed for artistic, historical, literary, or scientific purposes or within freedom of expression, provided that privacy, personality rights, public order, and criminal-law boundaries are not violated.

That exemption is important, but it is limited. Article 28 does not say that every publication using a person’s image is immune from data-protection law. It says the expression-oriented carve-out works only if privacy and personality rights are not violated and the processing does not amount to a crime. In practical terms, that means a documentary, news site, or social commentator may have more room than a shampoo brand, betting advertiser, or e-commerce seller. Commercial promotion is the context in which consent, scope, and lawful basis become most difficult to dispute.

The Constitutional Court’s N.B.B. judgment strengthens that broader logic. Although the case concerned internet news archives rather than advertising, the Court held that the right to be forgotten flows from the Constitution’s protection of honour, reputation, and personal data, and it stressed that continued online accessibility of personal data can become a serious constitutional problem over time. The Court listed factors such as the content, the time elapsed, whether the information is current, whether there is public interest, and whether the person is a politician or celebrity. While N.B.B. was not a commercial-endorsement case, it supports the broader point that continuing online availability of personal images can aggravate harm and strengthen removal arguments.

Advertising law makes unauthorized image use even riskier

Turkish advertising law adds another layer that is often overlooked. Article 61 of the Consumer Protection Law defines commercial advertising broadly as marketing-style communications made in any medium to sell or lease goods or services or persuade a target audience in connection with a trade or profession. The same article says advertisements must conform to public morality, public order, and personal rights, and be honest and true. It further prohibits implicit advertising and states that advertisers, advertising agencies, and media companies must comply.

This matters because an unauthorized image use is often not merely a privacy problem; it is also a commercial representation problem. If a business uses someone’s face in a way that implies endorsement, sponsorship, customer satisfaction, or affiliation, it is not just disclosing a portrait. It is delivering a market-facing message. Under Article 61, that message must respect personal rights and cannot disguise its advertising nature. That is one reason why using a person’s image in native ads, testimonial-style posts, advertorials, banners, and catalog pages without proper permission can create multiple claims at once.

The same logic appears in the influencer guideline published by the Ministry of Trade. The official English summary states that the guideline covers all forms of consumer commercial advertising and commercial practices by social media influencers and that such advertisements must be clearly and distinguishably expressed. It also says covert visual, written, or audio product placement on social media is prohibited. If a brand or creator uses another person’s image in a promotional post, story, reel, or collaboration creative without clear permission and without a lawful advertising structure, the risk is not only private-law misuse of image. It may also be unlawful commercial communication.

Common commercial-risk scenarios in Turkey

In practice, unauthorized commercial image use in Turkey often appears in recurring patterns. One example is the expired-campaign problem: a brand keeps using a model’s or influencer’s image after the agreed term. Another is the scope-creep problem: a photo originally approved for one channel, one geography, or one campaign theme later appears on packaging, in-store displays, franchise materials, or international social-media accounts. A third is the testimonial illusion problem: a customer, employee, or participant’s image is used in a way that implies endorsement even though no valid advertising consent was secured. These scenarios combine Article 86, personality rights, KVKK, and advertising law in one dispute.

Another common scenario is the archive-and-recycling problem. Businesses sometimes treat old image libraries as reusable forever. But Turkish law does not support that assumption. Article 4 of the KVKK requires purpose limitation and proportionality, Article 10 requires transparency, and Article 20 of the Constitution frames personal-data use around law or explicit consent. If the original campaign purpose has ended, indefinite reuse becomes harder to justify. N.B.B. also shows that long-term continued accessibility of personal data can worsen the legal analysis.

Criminal exposure can arise in serious cases

Not every unauthorized image use becomes a criminal case, but Turkish criminal law should not be ignored. Article 134 of the Penal Code punishes violation of another person’s private life, increases the penalty where the violation occurs through recording images or sound, and punishes unlawful disclosure of images or sounds of another person’s private life, including when the offence is committed through the press or broadcasting. Articles 135 and 136 separately criminalize unlawful recording of personal data and unlawful obtaining, dissemination, or transfer of personal data. KVKK Article 17 then expressly refers crimes concerning personal data back to Articles 135 to 140 of the Penal Code.

This means image misuse can cross from civil to criminal territory when the visual material is private, secretly obtained, unlawfully recorded, or unlawfully disclosed. A routine consent dispute over a commercial headshot is not the same as publishing intimate images, leaking private recordings, or scraping personal images and redistributing them commercially without a lawful basis. The latter category can generate much sharper exposure.

How to manage consent and contracts correctly

Because the legal framework is layered, the safest Turkish practice is to use specific, informed, and commercially detailed releases. A valid image-use permission should not stop at “I consent.” It should identify the user, the purpose, the channels, the territory, the duration, whether editing or cropping is allowed, whether paid advertising and sponsored content are included, whether foreign transfers are possible, and whether the image can be sublicensed to agencies, media buyers, or affiliated companies. That structure aligns with the KVKK’s definition of explicit consent as freely given, specific, and informed, and with the broader Turkish preference for clear scope rather than vague blanket language.

The same applies to post-death and public-figure uses. Article 86 shows that portrait consent questions do not disappear immediately upon death and that even where the statutory exceptions apply, Article 24 of the Civil Code is still reserved. So brands should be very cautious about assuming that a famous historical image, a politician’s picture, or event photography may be turned into advertising without further analysis.

Remedies and enforcement in Turkey

Where unauthorized commercial use occurs, Turkish law offers a strong remedial mix. The depicted person may seek prevention and cessation under Civil Code Articles 24 and 25, moral compensation and publication-style redress under Code of Obligations Article 58, data-subject remedies under the KVKK, consumer-advertising complaints where the image use forms part of a deceptive or implicit ad, and, in serious privacy or data cases, criminal complaint routes under the Penal Code.

That enforcement mix is one reason Image Rights and Unauthorized Commercial Use in Turkey should be treated as a real business risk rather than a secondary branding issue. A company can lose a campaign, face damages, be forced to remove or correct materials, attract regulator attention, and in some cases trigger criminal proceedings—all from the same image misuse.

Conclusion

In Turkey, image rights are protected through a combination of portrait rules, personality rights, personal-data law, advertising law, and criminal law. Article 86 of Law No. 5846 says portraits generally cannot be publicly exhibited or disclosed without consent. Civil Code Articles 24 and 25 provide injunction-style protection for unlawful attacks on personality rights. Code of Obligations Article 58 supports moral compensation and publication-style remedies. The Constitution and the KVKK protect private life and personal data, while Article 61 of the Consumer Protection Law adds a commercial-communication layer that requires advertisements to respect personal rights and forbids implicit advertising.

The practical takeaway is simple. In Türkiye, using a person’s image for commercial purposes should be treated as a high-discipline legal act, not a casual marketing choice. The safest rule is to secure a clear written permission that matches the exact commercial use, and to revisit that permission when the campaign expands in time, territory, platform, or message. When businesses ignore that discipline, Turkish law gives the depicted person several strong ways to stop the use and seek redress.